A modern communication system transfers information between a subscriber unit and a serving base station in a frame-structured format with a determined frame structure and frame parameters. The frame usually comprises information indicating the structure and parameters related to the frame. For example, FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate downlink and uplink frame structures of Universal Mobile Communications System (UMTS) according to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications, respectively. Each frame comprises a plurality of time intervals (or time slots), specifically 15 time intervals (TI). Each time interval in the downlink frame in FIG. 1A comprises portions of data (DATA1 and DATA2), a portion of transmit power control symbols (TPC), a portion of transport format combination indicator symbols (TFCI), and a portion of pilot symbols which may be used, for example, in channel synchronisation. The uplink frame in FIG. 1B comprises data in data channel and TPC, TFCI, and pilot symbols. Additionally the uplink frame comprises feedback information (FBI) symbols. The TFCI symbols are used for informing a receiver of the transmission parameters of the frame. The TFCI symbols may comprise information on how to decode, de-multiplex and deliver the received data on the appropriate transport channels. In UMTS, each TFCI word comprises 10 bits, and the TFCI bits are encoded by using a (32, 10) sub-code of the second order Reed-Muller code in a transmitter. Thus, the result of the encoding process is 32 encoded TFCI bits. In each time interval of a frame, two encoded TFCI bits are transmitted to a receiver. Since there are only 15 time intervals in the frame the last two TFCI bits may be set to zero and, thus, the receiver also knows that the last two bits, which were not transmitted, are zero. Prior to the transmission, the TFCI bits may be mapped and modulated into TFCI symbols according to a symbol constellation used in the transmission.
Since the TFCI symbols are transmitted in several time intervals of the frame, the receiver has to wait for reception of the whole frame, and buffer the whole frame, before it can decode and determine the TFCI and start processing the received data. As a consequence, the receiver has to be provided with large buffers, which results in high costs and complexity of the receiver.